High-Resolution 3-D Refractive Index Tomography and 2-D Synthetic Aperture Imaging of Live Phytoplankton

Abstract

Optical measurements of the morphological and biochemical imaging of phytoplankton are presented. Employing quantitative phase imaging techniques, 3-D refractive index maps and high-resolution 2-D quantitative phase images of individual live phytoplankton are simultaneously obtained without exogenous labeling agents. In addition, biochemical information of individual phytoplankton including volume, mass, and density of individual phytoplankton are also quantitatively obtained from the measured refractive index distributions. We expect the present method to become a powerful tool for the study of phytoplankton.